Reflections

It is autumn outside the thin skin
of glass I stare through to see
a single leaf drift down
from its mother tree, leaving
her bony skeleton shivering
inside a frigid breeze
while her thin, barked arms
stretch heavenward in sorrow.

She will die now for a time, bough-bent,
naked against winter's wrath
until spring brings life to her limbs.

And within my cocoon,
I consider my streaked reflection
in the pane, wondering when
autumn will find me, waiting
for that quiet tap on the glass
that says, "I know you're in there."

Negative Space

Silence sits on my lips like a snake,
slithering its slippery tongue out
through a scaly slot to sense
that single second when the strike
cannot miss its mark.
Coiled, my silence teasing
uncertainty into your words,
I wait
for that perfect pause
to fill
with the fruit of my fangs.

Desteindre

Because I have been tattooed
from the beginning,
you can wash your hands of me,
but the stain on my heart remains.
I have tried to scrub it clean,
yet your ink has written
an indelible story into my skin.

It will not fade.

The detergent of time
only makes your lines more distinct
against a bleached background,
and laser treatments are worthless.
They cannot erase my memories.

I have no choice.

Come back and finish
what you began.
Come fill in the shadows
of my future.

I squished a fly!

I squished a fly
and watched it die
so now it doesn't
try to fly.
I hope that I
try to fly
up until
the day I die.

Sound Barriers

Sound Barriers

Last night when you asked if I heard what you
said, I guess I could have told you that the
human ear hears a range of sound between
20 and 20,000 Hertz, and that maybe your voice
explored a territory beyond those boundaries,
or that sound travels at a rate of approximately
660 miles per hour, so your words must have
whipped by me when I wasn't looking. I could
have told you that at the exact moment your
sound waves attempted to enter my ear to begin
the second phase of the semiotic process, a
semi drove by outside with its air horn blasting.
Maybe I should have tried the sensitive approach,
that the dense fog of my emotions was
too thick for your words to penetrate, or that the
frequency collapsed against the cacophony
inside my head as I listened to the words you
didn't say.
But the truth is, I just wasn't listening.

Justin says, "I check your blog almost every day. Why don't you post anything?"

Well, I must admit that he's right. I haven't posted anything, but I do have an excuse, which is that I've been scribbling down the story of Augie's journey from mean old man to not quite so mean old man. The first draft is now done, so now I guess my measly excuse has become nothing more than an ex-cuse (whatever that is).

Justin, I promise to be more diligent in the future. Somehow I must regain my blog appeal.

Why I haven't added to my blog:

It seems like ages since I've visited this page. In fact, I only returned after Sharon asked what happened to the blog. That doesn't mean that my writing's gone to hell. It just means that right now my novel "Clay" is sitting beside me in the front seat, the poems are locked in the metaphorical trunk, and I've got the pedal pressed to the floor, dizzy from the journey unfolding onto the pages of "Clay."

Bear with me.

Be patient.

I'll be back with some tasty poetic tidbits.


In the meantime, google search jimbozoom once in a while. You might find something new.

Yours truly.

Jimbozoom